


Lakeside

by PoeticallyIrritating



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: AU, Camp AU, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 17:50:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1396966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoeticallyIrritating/pseuds/PoeticallyIrritating
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel. Sarah. Summer camp counselors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lakeside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [piggy09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/gifts).



> Inspired by and written for tumblr user sharkodactyl (piggy09 on AO3). I am only one of many, many people writing in this universe. Pretty much everything that's been written about it can be found [here](http://sharkodactyl.tumblr.com/tagged/camp-au/chrono).

Rachel lives for the weekends. After every five-day camp session they get two and a half days: to go home, stock up on supplies, maybe sleep in a real bed or take an indoor shower. But Rachel is a six-hour drive from home and Sarah doesn’t like to go back to her foster mother every week (“we just _fight_ ,” she moans), so instead they take the run-down shuttle into town on Friday afternoon.

From the bus stop they walk through the dust to the general store. Sarah heads to the snack aisle, collecting armfuls of potato chips, trail mix, protein bars. Rachel lingers outside for a moment to touch up her makeup, flipping open the compact kept in her purse. She gives herself an approving smile, replaces the mirror, and enters the store with the posture of a soldier or a ballerina. She can see Sarah in the back of the store, hunched over, trying to keep bags of chips from slipping out of her arms, and Rachel bites back her smile, striding past her to the liquor. She picks out a bottle of vodka for Sarah (“’S cheap and it’ll get us drunk, Rach, what more do you want?”) and a bottle of wine for herself.

She lowers her eyelashes at the gangly twenty-something behind the counter and leans just slightly forward, just a little bit into his space. “Hey,” he says gruffly, and she lifts her eyebrows and purses her lips in a way that could be misinterpreted as a smile by someone particularly stupid.

“Hey,” she says back, low and lingering.

“I—um—I’m gonna need to see some ID there.”

Rachel’s eyes stay on his as she reaches into her purse and pulls out her ID, shoddily modified with white-out and a pen to read 1983 rather than 1984. She covers the year with her fingernail as she holds it out. He tugs the ID out of her grip a little timidly and squints at it, just as Sarah comes up behind her (right on cue) and dumps her enormous pile of snack food onto the counter. “Oi!”

The kid’s eyes flicker from the picture to Rachel’s face just once before handing it back and ringing her up. “You’re good to go.”

Rachel waits outside until Sarah bursts through the door with three overstuffed plastic bags and collapses, giggling, onto her shoulder. “Christ, Rachel, he could barely speak after you left. How d’you _do_ that?”

Rachel’s mouth curls into an ambiguous smile. “Carefully applied mascara,” she says, and gives Sarah a look from underneath her lashes as a demonstration.

Sarah’s still for a moment before she grins. “Look at your fuckin’ bedroom eyes. I’d fall for it.” She grips the front of Rachel’s shirt dramatically. “Take me, Rachel Duncan. Take me now!”

For a split second Rachel can’t remember how to breathe. But Sarah’s let go of her and is laughing again, bags of snacks swinging as they return to the bus stop. They’ve almost been fast enough to catch the shuttle on its return from the other side of town, and they race up to it, panting, as the driver’s about to pull away.

“You’re the best, Dan!” Sarah says cheerfully, tumbling through the doors, flushed red from running in the heat. Dan grumbles something unintelligible, but Rachel sees him smile after Sarah turns away. He’s been driving this bus since Sarah was eight and she makes him smile despite himself. (Makes everyone smile, really. Rachel doesn’t know what to think about that.)

They wait until midnight before emerging from the cabin. They’re supposed to have a curfew, even over the break, but the only senior counselor left at camp has been snoring in the next cabin since ten-thirty. Rachel follows Sarah’s lead, exchanging her shorts for jeans, the extra fabric pleasantly constricting against bug-spray-sticky legs. She turns around to see Sarah’s backside sticking out from under the bed; the rest of her emerges triumphantly a second later with the vodka. Rachel raises her eyebrows pointedly. “Come on,” Sarah says, pulling a sweatshirt over her head, “drink the cheap shit for a change. We can have wine tomorrow night.”

“What makes you think you get to drink my wine?” says Rachel, but Sarah just grins and dances out the door. Rachel hastily double-knots her shoelaces and follows her outside, grabbing a jacket to ward off the chill that sometimes comes on at sunset.

Sarah’s flashlight bobs up and down, the yellow light illuminating oblong patches of the dirt trail down to the lake, but when they get out of the trees the moon is so bright that she doesn’t need it anymore. Sarah’s hair, tangled and unwashed, shines silver. She practically skips the last few steps, humming something that might be a campfire song, and Rachel follows. The old wooden dock creaks under their footsteps. When Sarah reaches the end, she kicks off her shoes, balling up her socks inside them. Rachel takes off her shoes as well, but—“are you _folding_ your socks?” Sarah asks.

“I want to put them back on later,” Rachel replies serenely. She puts the socks down by her sneakers, which she’s set neatly side by side, far enough from the edge of the dock that they won’t get knocked into the water. Sarah rolls up her jeans and edges forward until she can dangle her feet into the water. She leans back slightly, supported by her hands, to look up at the moon. Rachel sits next to her, legs crossed, feet pressed between the fabric of her jeans and the rough, splintery wood.

“Put your feet in,” Sarah says absently. Her eyes don’t leave the sky.

“It’s _cold_ ,” Rachel protests.

“Are you kidding me?” Sarah jerks her head around. “What, are you scared?”

“I’m sorry, did you say _scared_?” Rachel’s eyes go dark and dangerous. She untucks her feet and lets them drop over the edge.  Kicks up some water for good measure.

“Hey!” Sarah yelps, but she’s grinning and she splashes back. “Water’s not so bad, is it?” The vodka’s been sitting between them and she unscrews the top and takes a slug; shivers, from the cool air or the alcohol or maybe both. Rachel holds out her hand to receive the bottle. She means to take only a sip but it comes out faster than she expected and she chokes, gasping as it savages her throat like fire.

Sarah’s laughing. “Cheap stuff burns. Should’ve warned you.”

Rachel replaces the cap, eyes watering. “Yeah, maybe,” but once she’s swallowed enough to clear it from her throat she likes the slow burn in her chest and the tingle in her fingertips.

They’re silent for a while, looking out at the moon and its fragmented reflection in the lake. Their feet make soft splashing sounds trailing in the water. Crickets chirp. Rachel thinks she hears an owl, or maybe a loon? She’s not much for bird calls. Sarah leads nature hikes— _nature hikes, God_ —so she’s about to ask what kind of bird that is, but Sarah speaks first.

“Damn, but they’re loud tonight, aren’t they?” She can only be talking about the crickets, which seemed to increase in volume when the conversation lulled. “You know you can tell the temperature by their chirps?” She squints at her watch and her mouth forms numbers silently. “Fifteen…and then you add thirty-seven, so, um, fifty-something, fifty-two?—that’s in Fahrenheit, though, I don’t know what that means.”

“Minus thirty-two, divided by one point eight,” Rachel supplies helpfully.

“What?”

“Converting Fahrenheit to Celsius.” She thinks for a second. “Eleven degrees Celsius. Rounding down.”

“A little cold out,” Sarah concludes.

“I could have told you that without all the math.” Rachel smiles, takes another swig from the bottle. A little less this time and she’s prepared for the stinging harshness now, but she makes a show of it still, contorting her face with a grimace. “This is _swill_ , honestly.”

Sarah rolls her eyes. “Then stop drinking, princess, or shut up.” She takes some more and then leans back, uncurling herself until she’s flat against the dock except for her bent knees and dangling feet. “Four more weeks,” she says, and there’s something like sadness in her voice. “We’re more than halfway through.”

“There’s next year,” says Rachel.

“You’re coming back?” Sarah props her head up a little. “I thought you were just here for resume-padding, yeah?”

Rachel looks out onto the lake. “ _You’ll_ be back next year, I meant.” She doesn’t turn around. “I don’t know what my plans are yet for next summer. I should start looking at internships.”

Sarah makes a soft humming noise. “You should come back.”

Rachel breathes out slowly, through her nose. “Maybe,” she says. “I’ll have to think about it.” A breeze picks up, blowing her hair into her face; she brushes it behind her ears. There’s a pause. The trees rustle.

When Sarah speaks again it’s so soft Rachel can barely hear her. “I miss the stars so much when I leave.”

Rachel turns to look at her. Her eyes are directed straight up, and her hands are folded over her belly, rising and falling with her breath. Rachel leans back to join her, and their arms are so close that she can feel the heat from Sarah’s body. She tries not to think about it, instead staring very hard at the sky. “Big dipper,” Sarah murmurs, and Rachel laughs lightly and points out: the little dipper (“Ursa Minor,” she says), Cygnus, Scorpius, Hercules, Libra, Cassiopeia.

“Cassio-what? That’s crap, you’re makin’ these up.”

“No, look, little W shape right there.” Her finger zig-zags along the imaginary line between the stars.

Sarah grumbles. “All right, all right, I see it. Are you an astronomer, too? Anything you _can’t_ do?”

“We have a big library,” she says, and when Sarah doesn’t seem to understand she adds, “Star charts.”

“You’re joking.”

“I think they’re beautiful,” says Rachel. Then they don’t say anything for a while and there’s nothing but consulting mental images of star charts to keep Rachel from thinking about how close Sarah is and how warm and soft and—

Sarah sits up abruptly. “You want to go swimming?”

Rachel hums, pushes herself up onto her elbows and looks out at the moonlit water. “My bathing suit’s in the cabin,” she says, but Sarah’s already up and stripping off her clothes. Rachel forces her eyes down, away, to squint at the denim of her jeans.

“Don’t get all precious and modest on me,” Sarah says, pushing off her pants. “Nobody’s around.”

 _You’re around,_ Rachel wants to say. Instead she says, “There’s a _reason_ we wear bathing suits. This lake is filthy.”

“Just a little plant matter.” Sarah grins. She unhooks her bra and Rachel carefully lowers her eyes again, focusing intently on the pattern of the wood grain. She doesn’t look up until Sarah’s clothes are crumpled in a pile on the dock and she’s sliding naked into the water, lithe and pale on the blurred edges of Rachel’s vision. She bobs under, and when she surfaces her hair and face are streaming. “Get in! Or this is going to be _really_ boring.”

Rachel stands up in a caricature of reluctance, dragging her feet slowly onto the dock and taking the maximum amount of time to push herself to a standing position. She takes her clothes off a little faster and she can’t keep herself from looking at Sarah for split-second intervals. Maybe she’s checking to see if Sarah’s looking at _her_ and maybe she’s checking to see how cold she looks and maybe she’s just _looking_ and she doesn’t know which one but it feels magnetic; she tries to keep her eyes down but she can’t. She folds everything and places it by her shoes, and then she draws herself up, sets her jaw, and jumps.

When she emerges Sarah is spluttering, her face newly drenched. “You’re such an asshole,” she gasps, and Rachel, now lazily treading water, smirks.

Sarah doesn’t stay still for long; she ducks under and swims out,  long and lean and white, and Rachel watches, floating. She’s unwilling to put the energy into swimming and instead she leans back, letting her legs float to the surface until she’s resting first-swim-lesson style on her back, listening to the soft ripple of the water around Sarah’s near-perfect strokes. She closes her eyes. It doesn’t take long before the sound of Sarah’s legs kicking starts getting closer again. She comes back shivering, lips trembling. “It’s _cold_ out there.”

Rachel laughs, a little cruelly. “What did you expect?” She flips back to a more vertical position, keeping herself above water with the languid motion of her legs.

“Not the f-fuckin’ Ice Age,” Sarah grumbles, but the effect of her surliness is lost in the chattering of teeth. She’s beautiful even so, long tangled hair streaming down her back, blinking water from her eyes.

“I’ll come back,” Rachel says. It’s abrupt, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she can stop them. “Next year. I’ll come back.”

Sarah grins, all teeth. “Good.” When did she get so close? The motion of her limbs is echoed in the motion of the water that comes at Rachel in gentle waves—and then Sarah is _closer_ and her mouth is right _there_. Sarah moves one way and Rachel moves another, and after a few false starts and nose bumps they’re kissing and it’s everything Rachel has ever wanted. Sarah’s mouth is warm, almost shocking against the chill of the wind on her damp cheeks. Her legs slide against Sarah’s and it feels wonderful—inappropriate—obscene—exhilarating; their bodies are slick against each other and Sarah’s hands on her waist are cold but sure. Rachel tangles her fingers in Sarah’s hair and her heart is thudding so wildly that Sarah must feel it, _has_ to, the way their chests are— _well._ Suddenly there’s lake water in their mouths; neither of them has been paying much attention to keeping afloat. They break apart, gasping.

They’re silent for a moment, regaining their balance and their breath. Finally Sarah says, “Whoa.”

“Whoa,” Rachel echoes.

And then Sarah bursts into laughter and shoves a spray of lake water at Rachel’s face. Rachel yelps, but before she can splutter a protest, Sarah’s gasping through her laughter, “Where the hell have you been hiding _that_ all summer?” Rachel’s eyebrows dart up but she says nothing, just swims back to the dock and turns to look at Sarah, who says, in an admirable effort to sound uninterested, “Where’re you going?”

Rachel flashes her own toothy smile. “ _We_ are going someplace where I can kiss you without drowning.” She pulls herself onto the dock and gathers up her clothes, dragging them with effort over her dripping skin. She pulls on her shoes and refuses to look back. But she can hear Sarah clambering onto the wood, throwing on clothes, coming up behind her—she doesn’t stop walking until Sarah’s hand is on her shoulder. (Sarah’s lips on her face, on her neck. Sarah’s mouth hot on her skin. Sarah’s hair tickling her back.) “Sarah,” she says sharply, pulling away to maintain her composure, “can you wait _sixty seconds_?”

Sarah steps back with a deep, exaggerated sigh. “ _Fine_.”

It’s warm inside; the old heater is rattling with the effort. Rachel grabs a towel, tosses another to Sarah, pulls off her damp clothes. As she’s toweling off, Sarah moves in—wearing only her bra and underwear, towel hanging loosely from her arm. “Hey,” Rachel says sharply. “If we don’t kiss clothed tonight I’ll be disappointed. We’re going to do this _properly._ ”

“Should’ve kissed me before you took your clothes off, then,” Sarah returns, surly.

Rachel puts on pajama pants and a tank top; Sarah, underpants and an old T-shirt. “You’re not fully dressed,” Rachel protests, but Sarah says “this is what I sleep in” and her hands reach for Rachel’s waist and they’re tumbling onto her bed. Rachel’s wet hair is cold against her neck but the rest of her is warm under Sarah’s body, Sarah’s hands, Sarah’s mouth.

“Sarah,” Rachel tries to say, but her voice is muffled by the other girl’s lips. Sarah hears, though; she pulls back, a question in her eyes.

Rachel says nothing, but her eyes grow bright. With effort, she rolls them over. It requires some adjusting—Sarah’s side hits the wall and they scramble for a minute, limbs tangling—“oi, you’re on my arm!”—but then Rachel is above Sarah, supporting her weight on her arms, and Sarah is laid out beneath her. Like an offering, Rachel thinks: flushed and wide-eyed, hair spread halo-like across the pillow.

“What?”

Rachel’s smile feels like it blooms across her face. “Just looking.”

“Christ, you’re already sappy as hell.” Sarah’s eyes roll back and she’s nothing like pure or sacrificial anymore. “Kiss me already, asshole,” she says, and Rachel goes for the neck. She _bites,_ leaving marks that are absolutely going to be there in the morning and for several days thereafter; Sarah mumbles about bosses and kids but she’s arching up into Rachel, desperately, and when Rachel licks the marks she’s made, her words are lost on a soft breathy sound that Rachel likes, a lot.

They make out for an hour—two?—three?—and Rachel learns how to kiss in a way that way that makes Sarah moan into her mouth and Sarah finds a spot just in from Rachel’s hip that makes her gasp and whine. Hands slide beneath shirts and Rachel grinds her thigh between Sarah’s legs and sometimes Sarah’s been open-mouthed and gasping for so long that her mouth has gone cold and Rachel kisses it warm again.

Sarah collapses on Rachel’s chest after a while and their breathing slows together. Rachel strokes Sarah’s hair—or attempts to; her fingers keep getting caught. “You should _really_ brush your hair.”

“It’s camp,” Sarah says, with an attempt at a handwave from where she’s lying.

Rachel can’t bring herself to argue the point. Instead she cranes her neck to kiss the top of Sarah’s head. “I like you anyway,” she says. It comes out with greater significance than she’d planned, somehow, and for a moment she’s awash in panic, but Sarah mumbles “I like you, too,” into her chest.

They spend the rest of the weekend drinking wine and eating snack foods rather than resorting to the dismal dining options available (a sandwich bar stocked with stale bread and dried-out salami). Rachel dips Oreos daintily into her paper cup of wine; she feeds one to Sarah and Sarah grudgingly admits that she likes the taste. “Still the most fuckin’ pretentious way to eat Oreos I’ve ever seen.” (Rachel only eats them that way; the sweetness makes her choke otherwise.)

When they stand together on Monday to greet the new arrivals, Sarah reaches for her hand. Rachel resists at first, tense, conscious of hundreds of eyes on them, but Sarah’s fingers are soft and insistent and Rachel takes a long, slow breath in and out and grips Sarah’s hand in hers.

“Ow!” Sarah protests in a whisper. “Lighten up the death grip, Rach, Christ,” she says, and Rachel looks at her and she can feel her own pulse: deep and percussive in her chest, throbbing in her fingers where Sarah’s holding her hand, gentle in her neck. She wants to cry or laugh or _something_ and she really desperately wants to kiss her again.

Sarah sees her looking, and winks. “Here goes.”


End file.
